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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

> We wanted to stay stealth while in the bidding process and afterward in order not to draw too much attention

Why, because a major blog host owning the .blog TLD would appear anti-competitive?

It could be worse. Google (DBA "Charleston Road Registry") had a bid in to purchase .blog and make it only usable for Blogger (= Blogspot) blogs:

> This Google Registry service causes the domain name to be associated with the Blogger service, so that DNS for second-level domains (SLD) within the TLD will automatically resolve to the relevant Google service. [...] Client-initiated updates to the name servers for the domain name will not be accepted and the server will respond with an error type 2304 - “Object status prohibits operation”.

https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...

So would WordPress/Automattic be able to limit .blog to only be used for WordPress sites?

No. The terms that the TLD was created under ([1]) effectively establish it as public.

[1]: https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applications...

You nailed it. We wanted the TLD to be open, and anyone will be able to use it regardless of whether they use WordPress or not.

It's not like it's a concern for ICANN, Google owns .search, .ads, .dev, .app and more.

.dad and, yes, .foo!

.google

Probably to avoid having others enter the auction, driving the price up further.

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